That morning the sun was out and it promised to be a beautiful summer day!

The busdriver took us to Wallonia, to a small village called Tourpes in Hainaut, the province southwest of Ghent. This village houses the Brasserie Dupont. Their Saison (=farmhouse ale with very hoppy character) is considered the benchmark of all the saisons brewed in Belgium and anywhere else. All their beers are hoppy. Mr. Olivier Dedeycker gave us the tour, he is the managing director.

We tasted the Moinette blonde 8%vol. and also the brune 8% vol., the Saison 6% vol. (of course), and also the dry hopped new years beer “Avec les bons voeux” (= with the best wishes). All within the tradition of the old farmhouse breweries, they produce also their own cheese and bread. We tasted the “young” and the dryer “aged” cheeses. A very interesting book called “ Farmhouse ales” written by Phil Markowski treats this subject and is a must for the amateurs.

In the neighbouring village of Pipaix there is a brewery called Dubuisson, where they brew the very well known Bush beers.

We had lunch in the thriving tavern of the brewery called “Trolls and Bush”.

After a very pleasant lunch, where we tasted the Cuvée des Trolls 7% vol. (brewed with crushed orange peel like the wheat beers), we went down to the cellars where we tasted the oak aged Bush Prestige 13 % vol., straight from the cask! After visiting the brew house and the fermentation facilities, we were shown the very now modern bottling line. We were the first ones to take a glance at this!

In the afternoon we visited the medieval castle Chateau de Beloeil, a water castle still inhabited by the descendants of the Prince de Ligne.

The visit took an hour and we saw the whole castle and the gardens as well as the pond.

The third brewery on the program that day was Alvinne in Heule near Kortrijk. Two brothers in law, Davy and Glenn, started a “pico” brewery in the garden house of Davy’s house in 2003.

They have steadily been increasing capacity because of growing success and this summer they have moved to a larger place in Heule. The brewing facilities are on the ground floor, the tasting room is under the roof on the first floor. It is a small place so we had to split the group in two and do tasting and visiting alternatively.

But that went fine and their beers are great. They use a wide array of malts and hops (even US cascade hops in some beers!) There is Alvinne blonde, a nice unfiltered blonde with hoppy character, and the Alvinne bruin, a very good brown 6.5% vol. with a chewy malt character. A great Triple also of 8.7% vol. brewed with 3 different malts and 3 hops and some vanilla.

After this fine visit we drove to nearby Emelgem for dinner in Het Kroegske, a well-known beer pub with a list of several hundreds of brands.